‘Your grace! Sir Miles! Sir William!’ Pershall shook the inn bed that held the three of them. ‘His grace of Gloucester’s man is below.’ Memory burst over Miles like a bucket of cold water and he staggered from the bed, doused his face from the ewer and hurried downstairs, thankful he had gone to bed fully clothed.

It was the banneret, Huddleston, bringer of news from the night before, booted, spurred and impatient. ‘Rivers has tried to leave. His grace requests my lord of Buckingham attend him. I trust that is not a problem?’

So it was not to be a song in unison after all.

Miles was in attendance on both dukes when they visited Rivers. The earl was caged at his inn, pacing in his dressing robe, his hair retousled to lend him innocence. The air hung stale save for the expensive musk and sweat emanating from him.

‘My lords,’ he exclaimed. ‘What can you mean by this? My servants have just roused me in panic saying the place is surrounded by your men and none of us is allowed to set foot outside the door.’

‘Yes,’ said Gloucester.

Rivers opened his mouth, fishlike, and shut it again. There was an uncomfortable silence while Gloucester’s brooding countenance waited for the man to damn himself.

‘So you do not trust me. I do not believe it! I ride back fourteen poxy miles out of love and brotherhood, and this is my thanks. What has happened since last night, Gloucester? Has Buckingham and his crony here been spewing poison about me into your ears?’ Miles’s blood chilled beneath Rivers’s stare, and the single candle sputtered at the spittle from the man’s vindictive breath. ‘I should wear good armour on my back if I were you, my Lord Protector!’

Miles swiftly moved around the trestle to defend Harry, but Gloucester slammed the table and rasped out: ‘You were in full riding gear earlier and you gave orders to your men last night to quit Northampton before we were astir. Deny it and there are sufficient witnesses to make a liar of you.’

Calmer, Rivers shrugged. ‘I am sorry that it has come to this and that you have misinterpreted my good intentions. I always considered you a just man, Dickon.’

‘You shall have your justice.’ Gloucester turned to the men-at-arms, thronging the open doorway. ‘Hold him fast here until you receive further orders!’

‘You would not dare!’ hissed Rivers, making play of his superior height, the perfect face marred with a sneer. ‘I have a letter here that your brother wrote to me a full month before he died. Read it! I have full powers to escort the prince to London with as many men as I choose.’

Gloucester took the paper he held out and scanned it at the candle flame. ‘It says here “if need be”. There is no need!’ He handed it to Harry, who thrust it into the consuming flame. ‘Come, cousin, we have to meet the king,’ and he strode out.

With a grin at Miles, Harry bestowed a fulsome smile upon his very articulate brother-in-law, standing there in the last of his glory, ridiculous among the scoured, coarse trestles. ‘Adieu, Anthony. You see I am not the village idiot you always thought me.’

Rivers made no reply, no cutting or foolhardy jest, but just stared, expressionless, at Harry. Then finally he looked at Miles and his face unfroze. ‘Is this your doing? Did you prod this snail out of his shell?’ he sneered. ‘Harry here,’ and he reached out to cuff the duke as though he were a servant. ‘Young Harry always needed a nursemaid.’

The duke ducked back, his hand going to his sword, but Miles grabbed his arm. ‘Leave him, your grace!’

‘See, Rushden, he is spineless.’ The mocking face was bitter, showing age at last. ‘We all knew that at Westminster. Spineless.’

Upon his destrier, his mantle’s massive collar raised against the chill, Gloucester looked like a man about to take his rightful place as Lord Protector. It was as well, thought Miles, as they mounted up to quit the town before dawn; the worst danger lay ahead at Stony Stratford.

Spurring down the line with a lighted torch to ensure that Ned was with the Stafford retinue, Miles found Heloise mounted beside Knyvett, her cheeks still creased with sleepiness, and the boy a thumbsucking, sleepy curl in front of her.

‘You have done well, Lady Haute.’ Easing Traveller back, he signalled to Harry, and the entourage set off down Bridge Street to cross the Nene River.

Done well! Heloise growled silently as he left her. What in God’s name was this about? She could smell their fear. Where was Lord Rivers? Why would no one riding close give her a proper answer? God’s mercy, why this journey on such a churned-up road before daylight in the drizzle?

They made poor progress. Ned grew peevish as the sky lightened, distracting Heloise so bitterly with his complaints that she hardly noted the causeway and the bridge leading the weary procession into Stony Stratford. It was the smoky air and yeasty aroma of fresh bread clawing at her empty belly that alerted her. The White Horse, she thought, lifting her drooping shoulders, an inn she had sometimes breakfasted at on provisions trips when her mother was alive. But now?

‘Jesu mercy!’ Grim and tight-lipped, Sir William grabbed Cloud’s reins, keeping Heloise and the boy tightly within the duke’s bodyguard.

‘Amen,’ she agreed in appalled astonishment for ahead of them, the entire high street from one end of the town to the other was perilously filled with footsoldiers. The mutter of ‘Lord Rivers’ mistakenly ran ahead of them, and the Woodville men standing in half-armour with their scallop badges the only gleam about them, looked up bewildered as the Gloucester and Stafford heralds forced their horses through.

‘What’s happening?’ shrilled Ned, sensing the tension in Heloise’s tightening arms as her horse was drawn forward with the rest. She calmed the child but all around them the ordinary people’s minds were emanating terror. It was close to panic in the horsemen protecting her. If the Woodville foot soldiers pulled them from their saddles … Ned should not be here. It was wrong to use a child.

The muttering grew. Urgently the townsfolk began pushing their way out, away from the soldiers. Faces crammed the upper open windows of the merchants’ houses – women’s faces, lined by fear. Heloise anxiously craned to see where the prince might be. The Swan With Two Necks would have been her wager, but they rode in silence past it. The lack of cheering had become terrifying.

In Horse Market, beneath the lily and leopard standards and the damp pennons drooping with sunnes, white lions and falcons perched in fetterlocks, the prince was already on his horse. Whoever they had been waiting for, it was not the dukes, for consternation panicked the faces of the men standing about the twelve year old. A blond man in his twenties, Heloise guessed he must be Sir Richard Grey, the queen’s son by her first marriage, froze as he recognised Gloucester, his complexion turning yellow and sour like expiring milk. Had the young man been of greater rank or more experienced, he would have ordered his escort to sever the two dukes from their retinues. Instead he hesitated and it was a tall, portly bishop in a broad-brimmed hat, who kneed his horse forward to blithely offer greeting. The prince’s other officers followed the bid for peace, but they looked as guilty as a queue of felons lined up for hanging.

Beyond them, Heloise glimpsed a second bishop whose horse’s rein was fisted by a servant – an old, diminutive bishop, round shouldered from too much study, whose expression looked cramped as if both his mind and body ached. For an instant, the narrow eyes beneath the furrowed brow intercepted hers, and then he seemed to catch an inkling of the confrontation about to ensue. A sense of hope flooded to her across the metal-plated shoulders that sat between them, as if the man’s soul was stirring after a winter of sleep.

Then Rushden was at Heloise’s stirrup lifting Ned from her. ‘You are to make your bow to our new king, my lord. Come, madam!’ She hastily dismounted, tidying her veil. The crowd parted for them as he carried the child through.

With fair hair and a long build, the royal stripling in his mourning of blue doublet and matching cote, sat upon his white horse, fair as a faery prince. She tried to send him a message of peace as he studied his uncles’ bent heads in confusion. His grace of Gloucester rose from his obeisance, brushing off a straw that was clinging to his mourning hose. Buckingham, with a brief scowl at the offending cobbles, lowered himself dutifully.

‘Where is my Uncle Rivers?’ repeated the boy.

‘Your highness, we shall explain if you will but step back inside your inn with us. See, here is Lord Stafford come to greet your grace.’

Buckingham reached out a hand to Ned, and so did Gloucester. With impeccable dignity, the little boy took both dukes’ hands and stepped forward until he looked straight up into the chill blue eyes of Edward V. He showed no fear of any of the horses and Heloise said a silent prayer of thanks that the lesson had been well learned. His father lifted him to kiss the reluctant royal hand held out to him.

‘Now I have done this, can we please have breakfast?’ The five year old’s voice begat a rumble of laughter from the newcomers, but the prince’s men stood like statues, waiting for the blond man’s orders.

‘No haste, is there?’ Buckingham asked the prince affably, straddling his son on his waist with difficulty since he played at father so rarely. ‘My lord of Gloucester and I have not yet breakfasted nor I will be sworn have you, your highness. What say you we return to the lodgings you have just left and talk while breakfast is being cooked?’

Edward V had little choice but to dismount. It was then that Gloucester threw his arms about him, clearly close to tears. The boy accepted his sympathy and with an uncle at either elbow and his tiny cousin at his heels, he returned to the inn he had quit hours earlier. The press of people following them was so great that Heloise was almost cut off from her charge, but Rushden and Sir William flanked her.

‘Where is Lord Rivers?’ she asked her husband.

‘Under arrest,’ he mouthed at her. Jesu! There could have been a bloody battle then and there; the dukes had cleverly avoided a public quarrel that would have sent panic circling out from Stony Stratford across England.

Inside the warm, fetid atmosphere of the inn, Heloise could still sense the mortal fear pulsing in the minds of the prince’s retinue, but one stocky man was distracted from his dilemma as he noted her standing with her hands protectively upon Ned’s shoulders. His brow creased beneath his black hat and he pushed his way across.

‘You are not my Aunt Haute.’

Within the instant, Rushden stepped between them, his hand against the man’s shoulder. ‘You have more pressing matters to concern you, Haute.’ His other hand, behind his back, signalled Heloise to retreat swiftly.

Moments later, he located her in refuge behind Knyvett. ‘Dear me,’ he remarked behind his gloved fingers. ‘You have a poor memory for your relatives. There are a pair of them in this very room.’

‘You might have warned me, but thank you for helping me just then.’

‘Lady, I am warning you. The Hautes are cousins to the Woodvilles.’ But he seemed too exhilarated by the currents of danger and excitement that eddied around them to share her fresh anxiety. Dear God, they were like hunting dogs that had tasted a kill, these Stafford and Gloucester men.

Against the inappropriate backdrop of a wall that was daubed with Adam and Eve sprinting before cherubims armed with flaming swords, the Duke of Gloucester, hands clasped behind his back, was telling his royal nephew how saddened he was over King Edward’s death. The entire room hushed to listen to Gloucester’s eloquence. The careful phrases were well couched, but one could have been pardoned for wondering if Duke Richard had missed his vocation as a bishop or a schoolmaster. The sermonlike flow of words, recalling his loyalty to his brother, was listened to in respectful silence, but then the floodgates of his dammed-up grievances burst and out poured a righteous indictment of the Woodvilles, of how they had encouraged the late king to whore and glut when he should have been coddling his belly and administering the realm.

The prince’s half-brother, his cousins and his retainers, with everything to lose, at last began to interrupt. But Grey had lost his only opportunity. Now, as the beleaguered young man opened his mouth to refute his guilt, it was Buckingham who tersely bid him hold his tongue, while Gloucester, more passionate than Heloise had ever imagined possible, reached a predictable peroration: ‘Arrest them!’ His voice was hoarse as he stabbed a jewelled finger towards the escort leaders.

‘No!’ Grey flung himself on his knees before the prince, grabbing him above his spurs. ‘Brother, save me, for the love of God! Stop them! Stop them! This is treason!’

‘Why is that man on his knees?’ Ned tugged at Heloise’s girdle tassels.

‘Treason!’ exclaimed Buckingham righteously, grabbing the torch of fury from Gloucester’s exhausted breath. Ebony taffeta rustled assertively as he gestured like a player towards the street. ‘This – this army – can have no other purpose but evil towards my lord of Gloucester.’

‘These men are here to honour me, perhaps, Uncle Buckingham.’ But sarcasm and the icy Woodville gaze were merely blunt weapons in the hands of a twelve year old. ‘As for treason,’ the prince added, his gaze falling with concern upon his desperate half-brother. ‘I am sure her grace my mother and Uncle Riv—’

‘The ruling of this land is not women’s business,’ Buckingham exclaimed indignantly. ‘Your father left no such authority to your mother. Your so-called friends have deluded you, your grace. Up!’ He wriggled a shiny bootcap menacingly at Grey.

‘Nephew,’ said Gloucester gently, his virtuous anger fled. ‘Did they not tell you I am to be Lord Protector until you come of age?’ The boy’s mouth quivered. ‘Do you think that after fighting for your father and holding the north for him over these many years, I should do you harm? I am only carrying out my brother’s will, God rest his soul. Shall you be content with your father’s wishes or not?’

Respect shone in the boy’s eyes. ‘Yes, of course I am content with the government my father wanted but—’

‘Then, Lord Grey,’ Gloucester cut in with a quiet courtesy that was more natural to him than anger, ‘would you and your companions be kind enough to submit yourself to custody until further inquiries have been made?’ There was no choice for Grey or for Haute and the others, who were escorted out.

Edward V sniffed: ‘I am sure you are wrong, Uncle Richard.’

‘I sincerely hope so, your highness,’ answered Gloucester. ‘It was Lord Hastings who warned your Uncle Buckingham and myself of the danger.’ That drove away any argument ripe upon the boy’s lips.

‘Come on, lad, let’s have some breakfast.’ A man unused to children’s company, Buckingham came in too heavy-handed. ‘Lady Haute, bring Lord Stafford. He has drawn a picture for you, your highness.’

The prince, as tall as his uncle Gloucester, sent a scornful glance at Ned, and then he glared at Heloise as though she were a clod of dung upon the instep of his shoe. ‘Another time, mistress-whoever-you-are.’

‘Her name is Lady Haute,’ corrected little Ned stoutly.

The cold young gaze fixed upon the wooden arch that crested the ceiling. ‘Mind your manners, Lord Stafford,’ he declared, ‘you are not duke yet. Come, Uncle Gloucester!’ Gloucester pulled a face at Buckingham and the two men followed their unanointed sovereign up the staircase.

Ouch! Rushden grimaced, returning Heloise’s lift of eyebrow. If they listened at the new king’s breast, would they hear a heartbeat?

‘I do not like him. He is a very rude boy,’ exclaimed Ned, fists coiled. ‘And it was my best picture!’

‘Kings are allowed to be bad-humoured, especially if they are in mourning.’ Heloise crouched down to look him in the face, tickled him in the ribs and whispered, ‘And I think your manners are far superior.’

She sat him beside her on the settle beneath the window and produced from her purse a length of knotted string, which she wound around her fingers and then pulled it free as if by magic. Ned was too little to copy her but it took his mind off the insults.

With a sudden burst of nervous conversation, the two dukes’ retainers mingled better now that they had enjoyed a common enemy and come through unscathed.

‘Mistress.’ Sir Richard Huddleston bowed above her, sat down unasked beside the boy and, taking the string, showed the child a simpler trick. ‘Now go and show Sir William.’ The child scampered off. ‘It seems to me Lady Haute has lost weight and shed at least thirty years since last I saw her.’

Heloise smiled and momentarily set a finger to her lips. ‘Ask your friends not to give me away, please. I pray you, how is madam your wife?’

‘Mistress, a realm is at stake and we are dealing with the housekeeping.’ He observed that her husband was glancing suspiciously in their direction. ‘To be brief, his grace of Gloucester asks if you could let us know anything untoward. New alliances. Whether any of them,’ he glanced towards Rushden, Knyvett and the other Stafford knights, ‘are ever closeted in secret talks. In return, my Lord Protector will do his best to convince Holy Church that your marriage must be annulled, and we shall find you a different husband.’ The child ran back to her and clambered onto her knee. ‘Think about it, my lady.’

Rushden homed upon her like an arrow after Huddleston left her. It would be pleasing if he was jealous.

‘What did that man want, madam?’ he demanded coldly, though his hand tugged Ned’s hat playfully enough to tease him.

‘Renewing acquaintance. He brought me word from Dionysia. She is at Middleham.’

‘You never told me that.’ He cast a glance about the room and regarded Heloise speculatively. ‘How many more of Gloucester’s people here do you know? It could be useful. Why are you glaring at me, madam?’

‘Because I now know what it feels like to be a tenez ball,’ muttered Heloise.

‘Boing, boing!’ shrieked Ned and had to be removed.

It was tedious waiting. There was little breakfast to go round and while the dukes placated the prince upstairs, Heloise tried to keep Ned content. She was halfway through telling ‘St Brendan and the Whale’ to him when Rushden joined them.

‘When do we leave for London, sir?’ cried Ned, grabbing the knight’s hand and swinging his full weight upon it.

‘When Lord Hastings sends us word it is safe to do so.’ The little boy was seized with both hands, swung in a circle, and then turned upside-down for good measure.

Heloise waited until the pair of them had come to a standstill. ‘We are staying here?’

‘No, we are going back to Northampton with the prince. There are far more beds there and it is something to do. Better than hanging round here the rest of the day with that petulant whelp.’ He grimaced at the ceiling.

‘For shame,’ she chided, well aware that deafness was not one of Ned’s attributes. ‘His highness is young, uncertain.’

‘My lady,’ Rushden lowered his voice, ‘he looked at you as though you were scum.’ Annoyance tightened his voice as though the insult had been to him.

‘Kings can do that, sir,’ she warned him, well pleased at his concern.

His face told her he would see about that.

They were all growing heartily sick of the road between Northampton and Stony Stratford, but the wind had blown the rain away and the air had become blowsy, seductive with the hum of insects and perfume of the meadow flowers.

Rushden, riding back down the column, saluted Heloise indifferently but on his return he reined in between Sir William’s horse and Cloud to tip Ned’s hat askew.

If only she might reach out gloved fingers to tidy Rushden’s wind-ruffled hair, thought Heloise, melting with pride. Astride Traveller, his serpent badge gleaming against a black velvet shoulder, her husband looked as though he had just galloped out of a legend. There was dependability in this man, she thought, remembering his protection of her, but ruthless self-interest too. You could load his shoulders and his spirit would not break but there were sunless parts of his soul that chilled her heart. Unsatiated ambition lurked like a wolf – wild, untameable in him, and Buckingham. And she disliked Buckingham. You cannot change Rushden, her common sense decreed; the treacherous stirring of her body each time he came near her had to be controlled, but the Heloise of the cockatrice and Potters Field did not lack courage.

‘You look cheerful, sir,’ she teased, reaching out a gloved hand to fondle Traveller.

The morning’s bloodless victory had pleased Rushden; his eyes were like quicksilver against his tanned face. ‘The country of French romances, this,’ he exclaimed, pointing a crop towards the woods horizoning the pastures to the west, his smile roguish. Heloise’s body stirred treacherously, remembering the pleasure of his hands caressing her. ‘If Elizabeth Woodville had not waylaid King Edward while he was hunting in that very forest, we might not have had this morning’s confrontation.’

‘The problem was that he married her,’ muttered Sir William, beneath his breath. ‘Two things to be avoided in a wife, greed and cunning. Shirt off your back in no time.’

‘I assure you, Sir William, I have not had my husband’s shirt off his back,’ Heloise murmured silkily, rearranging Ned before she sent a flirtatious glance sideways.

‘My dear Lady Haute,’ interrupted Rushden. ‘Perhaps you have not tried.’

Once more in Northampton, Heloise evaded four o’clock supper, preferring to sit on a bench outside the inn and mend a tear in Ned’s second-best cote. Martin stood by to guard her against any forward soldiers. She watched a platter taken across the road to Lord Rivers’s inn. It was returned, untouched, and then went forth again, this time to the house where they were holding Lord Grey. The platter was returned empty.

While she sat watching the world pass, the fat bishop, Alcock, the President of the Royal Council at Ludlow, rode in from Stony Stratford too, and there again in his company was the mysterious churchman, garbed like a bishop but with no retinue of his own, drooping in his saddle. Heloise felt the old cleric’s mind groping, struggling, to free itself. Eyes, beneath drooping lids, met hers. Help me, he seemed to be saying, bleak with despair.

‘Find out the old man’s name,’ she bade Martin. He returned, cheerful with success.

‘Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. Seems that the late king, God rest ’is soul, ordered ’im to be kept in custody. Isn’t Bramley within ’is diocese, my lady?’

‘Oh yes,’ murmured Heloise frowning, ‘indeed it is.’

At Gloucester’s inn, Miles, now that the danger was temporarily in abeyance, felt like celebrating. A breach in the Woodville—Yorkist wall after all these years of waiting! The Rushdens would be powerful again as they had been under Henry VI.

‘Now you, sir.’

Miles tried to concentrate as Ned – permitted grudgingly into the prince’s presence – pushed the walnut halves back along the table. Obediently Miles slid them in a figure of eight, covering them with his palms. ‘Which one now, little lord?’

‘There! There!’

The child’s excitement drew a royal scowl. ‘Can you not play outside, cousin!’

Miles took Ned back to Heloise and returned to wait on a bored Harry. Gloucester had finished signing his dispatches to London and was suggesting the prince might wish to reward some of his household back at Ludlow. But there was no manual for being a lord protector.

‘It might be advisable for you to practise your new signature before you sign the order. A wobbly script denotes indecisiveness and the people want a strong king.’

Parchment and quill were set before the prince. The boy wrote Edwardus, hesitated, then added Quintus. His handwriting, Miles noted, was anxious and the script sprawled, large and untidy, barely legible.

Harry was getting fidgety, clearly frayed with listening to the schoolmaster oozing out of Gloucester. ‘It is said you can read a man’s character from his writing,’ he remarked, examining the raw, royal signature with a feigned interest.

‘Indeed?’ replied the prince haughtily. ‘I have never heard that before.’

Miles watched Harry keep a snuffer on his temper. The prince was a Woodville to the thick skin of his heels. Did the brat not notice he was turning Uncle Harry into an implacable enemy?

‘You write something then, Uncle Richard.’ Dipping the shaft into the inkwell, the prince handed the quill over.

Gloucester smiled round at the amused audience, was pensive for a moment, and then in small neat writing scratched out Loyaulte me lie. ‘Loyalty binds me.’

‘Yes, I know what it means. I did not quite waste my time at Ludlow.’

‘But it means more than that, sire,’ replied Gloucester gently. He wet the point again and wrote R.Gloucestre underneath. ‘I took the motto for my own when your father made me Duke of Gloucester and now I am pledging my loyalty to you.’ He bracketed the motto to his signature in eternal synonymity.

‘Now, you, Uncle Buckingham.’ The prince pushed the paper towards Harry challengingly as if to say: Out-Gloucester Gloucester if you can!

Harry wrote Souvente me souvene and beneath it Harre Bokingham. The writing stretched across the page, making up in breadth what it lacked in height, a sure contrast to Gloucester’s careful Italian script.

‘So, I must “Remember you often”. Your writing is most clear, Uncle Richard, and tidy like your person, whereas Uncle Buckingham is much more extravagant in his writing, person and dress.’ He glanced along the table for agreement, and stopped at Miles.

‘Very true, your highness,’ he agreed, grinning at Harry.

‘Well, it’s not hard, is it?’ the brat retorted, making enemies thick and fast. If it had been permitted, Miles would have happily left the table. Fortunately Harry had endured a bellyful of singing descant to Gloucester’s avuncular melody.

‘Grant me your gracious leave, sire,’ he murmured, and excused himself and his officers.

Free of subservience, Harry was as ebullient as a duke might manage as he and Miles rounded the corner to their inn ahead of the rest.

‘The Woodville summer is over, over at last! Christ, Miles, thrice today I thought you and I would be hauled through the Tower of London’s Watergate.’

‘Whoa, London may play the whore with us.’

‘But, Miles,’ purred Buckingham, ‘Lord Hastings is so used to handling whores.’

The pair of them slapped palms. Safe from the windows of Gloucester’s lodging, Harry would have performed cartwheels had Miles encouraged him.

‘I cannot believe it. Rivers and Grey under arrest and the king in our hands. By God, I should like hear the queen’s scream when the news reaches her. This will ripple up her fur like an ill wind.’ Startled, he crossed himself as a thin wraith uncoiled itself from the doorstep.

‘Who’s there?’ Miles drew out his sword.

‘My lords, good evening to you.’ Thomas Nandik, who, having delivered the news of the king’s death to Buckingham, had suckered himself to the duke’s retinue like a leech, bowed obsequiously. He would have grovelled on request. ‘Your grace, do you need letters written, or is there some other way I may serve you?’

Buckingham shrugged. ‘Attend me, Nandik. You may talk to us while we disrobe.’

Miles disliked the fellow, but the scarecrow turned out to be good company. More wine on top of his evening’s drinking made him leak scandalous tales of student romps and the peccadilloes of learned Cambridge masters.

At a late hour, it was Sir William who remembered it was the Devil’s Eve and the conversation shifted to Satan’s works. Nandik boasted he was a scholar in astrology.

‘Can you cast a horoscope for me now?’ Harry sounded far too eager.

‘I do not think this is wise, your grace.’ Miles looked to Sir William for backing, but the older man was almost snoring

‘I have already done so, your grace, in an idle moment. You understand I am no expert at the art.’ An idle moment! Sweet Christ!

Miles leaned forward uneasily. ‘You are too modest, Nandik.’

The man ignored the warning under the civility. ‘Anyone who has studied arts at Cambridge is fully competent.’

The duke grinned at Miles. ‘So what did mine reveal, Nandik, or dare you not say?’

The man’s dark eyes glimmered wickedly. ‘It promised great wealth and titles.’

Laughing, the duke quaffed down more cider. ‘The title I already have, but great office I desire.’ Thank God, thought Miles, the mattock had turned the turf of common sense, or had it? Harry was happily drunk.

Nandik was not. ‘Your grace, to forecast so for any man might be taken as flattery but for you now …’ He did not need to finish.

‘For me now, any man might make that prediction.’

Miles let his breath go and Harry, the familiar, predictable Harry, smiled across at him. Nandik was still the outsider.

The duke was pensive as de la Bere saw the fellow out. ‘Is there truth in prophecy?’ he asked. ‘Do you think that Satan has crawled from Hell to listen to our idle words?’

Miles swallowed, feeling his skin go goose-fleshed beneath his shirt.

‘Prophecy?’ He remembered the angry hum of the bees and Heloise’s warning. ‘I have met a woman whose premonitions are always right.’ Somehow mentioning Heloise banished the acrid taste of Nandik’s presence. ‘Surely you will not put any faith in that grovelling wretch, my lord. If you asked him to lick your shoes free of dung, he would do it.’

‘And would you?’

The question hurt.

‘No, my lord duke, I should make sure you never sullied them in the first place.’